Assessing Skill in Synthesis and Creative Thinking

The CATS in this group focus on synthesis—each stimulate the student to create, and allow the faculty to assess, original intellectual products that result from a synthesis of course content and the students’ intelligence, judgment, knowledge, and skills.

One-Sentence Summary

Students answer the questions “Who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why?” (WDWWWWHW) about a given topic and then creates a single informative, grammatical, and long summary sentence.

Examples:

Encapsulating E.T. – An alien falls to the planet earth, meets a group of boys that learn to love and appreciate him, and the boys help him return to his home.

Students could use their favourite book, video game, TV show or instructors could keep it course based.

LMS and | or External Tools

• Post to Discussions with the option to only see others’ posts once they themselves have posted.
• If there is a common theme, create a shared document in Teams, Drive (Docs or Slides), or social media to connect to the topic.

Word or Visual Journal

Involves a 2-part response; 1st the student summarizes a short text, concept, or lecture in a single word and 2nd the student writes 1-2 paragraphs explaining the word choice. Alternative: Students choose one, CC-licensed photo or graphic to summarize.

Examples:

Use either a concept that has threaded throughout the course or program.

Highlight the college or provincial messaging on Covid-19 for the activity.

LMS and | or External Tools

• Post to Discussions or to ePortfolio as reflective practice
• Any photosharing site with Creative Commons licensing – Flickr, Unsplash, Pexel, etc

*This exercise has the added benefit of expanding to include further learner development if information on Creative Commons (the what? the why? the how?) is included. This knowledge would build toward learner development under EESs (Essential Employability Skills), ACRL Frames (Association of College and Research Libraries, and SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)

Approximate Analogies

Students simply complete the 2nd half of an analogy—a is to b as x is to y; described as approximate because rigor of formal logic is not required.

Examples

(Communications) The theme is to an essay as ________ is to ____________.

(Physics) Mass is to volume as ________ is to ____________.

(Sociology) Income is to social class as ________ is to ____________.

LMS and | or External Tools

• Form in Google Drive with the ability to see others’ submissions enabled

Concept Map

Students draw or diagram the mental connections they make between a major concept and other concepts they have learned.

• This approach is used often and has numerous how-to resources in text and audio visual to assist.

  Examples

  Students could connect course LOs to specific content | takeaways from the course.

  LMS and | or External Tools

  • Can be low tech: Draw-Take a picture; use MS Word and upload to Discussions or Dropbox
  • Use technology like MindMeister, Coggle, Bubbl etc. for either independent or collaborative mind-mapping.